Backyard Escape Pod

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Re: Backyard Escape Pod

Postby pchast » Wed Aug 12, 2015 9:22 pm

Looks good. :thumbsup:
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Re: Backyard Escape Pod

Postby mikeschn » Thu Aug 13, 2015 2:59 am

We definitely need to see a picture of you sitting in it! :R :pictures:

Mike...

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Hoping to get some time to work on the door in the next week or two, and then my neighbor and I are going to try to get this thing out of the basement and into my garage for door and window installation, painting, and interior coverings. With any luck, I'll be able to sit in it before the snow falls.

-M
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Re: Backyard Escape Pod

Postby KCStudly » Thu Aug 13, 2015 9:56 am

I can imagine the solitude of sitting in the pod with a small ceramic heater, reading a good book while snow falls around me outside. I bet that would be very quiet and relaxing! :thumbsup:
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Re: Backyard Escape Pod

Postby rebapuck » Sat Aug 15, 2015 12:05 am

I hope you realize that this will not end up being your escape pod, but rather the kids playhouse. You know you can't keep them out of it. It's too cute.
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Re: Backyard Escape Pod

Postby mreidsma » Mon Aug 17, 2015 9:17 am

But the door handle has a lock! :)

Yeah, the kids are already talking about their "playhouse." We've stopped calling it the "Escape Pod" and instead are calling it the Family Play House now.

-M
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Re: Backyard Escape Pod

Postby mreidsma » Tue Aug 25, 2015 3:03 pm

This past weekend I had a few hours to get some work done on the door. I ended up building the frame and cutting the 1/4 ply that will be the outer face of the door, and managed to get it all glued and screwed together.

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I made sure that my little 18" RV window will fit well.

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Hopefully by this weekend I'll get the blocking in for the door handle, and then glue in all the insulation. After that it's time to cover it in canvas and haul the little trailer out of the basement for painting!

I tried a few times to get a photo of me sitting in it, but there just isn't a lot of room in the basement so it was hard to see. Once we get it out of the basement I'll be sure to post some photos for scale.

-M
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Re: Backyard Escape Pod

Postby mreidsma » Fri Sep 18, 2015 1:44 pm

Over the past few weeks I've had a few minutes here or there to work on the interior and the door. The door has been insulated and canvased, and I came up with a solution for covering the interior that is both economical and lightweight (and hopefully durable).

First, I used drywall mud to putty all the cracks between the foam insulation and wood, and where two pieces of insulation met each other. I wanted the surface to be super smooth, so that the cracks didn't show through the covering. Then I sanded everything down and painted the ceiling and shelf semi-gloss white that I had lying around.

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Man, it tight in the workshop. That was the best image I could get! (So Mike, I'll have to wait until we get this thing out of the basement before you get a shot of me in it.)

The next step is to cover the walls with a rustic wood grain contact paper I found on Amazon for $3.99 a roll. I'll tack some interior trim up once the contact paper is up, so the edges will hopefully be secure. The contact paper matches the floor nicely, too! I'm a little worried about the dark walls and the small space, but all the light colored contact paper was really expensive and looked like crap.

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I hope to get this wrapped up next week since I have some vacation, and then I'll get the interior trim painted and installed. After that it's get my neighbors over to haul it out of the basement for exterior paint, then door and window installation!

And then it'll snow, so I probably won't use it until spring. But I'll have my workshop back!
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Re: Backyard Escape Pod

Postby mreidsma » Wed Dec 16, 2015 2:27 pm

Well, it's been a long time since my last update, but I've made quite a bit of progress. Unfortunately, that progress hasn't all been in the direction I'd hoped to go!

In October, I got my neighbor over to help me push the Escape Pod up the stairs and finally out of the basement. Unfortunately, I discovered too late that the floor joist above the stairway had been cut on a slight angle, meaning that while the shelter would fit fine under the section where I measured, it was a half-inch too tall for the other side of the stairway.

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We hemmed and hawed about it, and in the end ran out of time to get it out of the basement for the day. So instead we installed the wheels and feet, and had a moveable wheelbarrow-style teardrop in the basement.

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I had trouble getting help for a second round of pushing the Escape Pod up the stairs, and so my attention turned to other things for a while. Around Thanksgiving, my 5yo daughter asked me to build a playhouse with her in the backyard out of scrap wood, after she saw some ice fishing shanties for sale. Seeing a chance that I might be able to keep the Escape Pod for myself if the kids had an alternative playhouse, I dove in! Building a square structure outside sure goes faster than building a curved one in your basement. Here's where we are at 3 weeks later (with about $50 invested in the roofing). My 5yo daughter did a lot of the nailing and cutting, but now she's ready to be done. "It's all above my head now Daddy, so you just finish it." It's been a lot of fun.

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Once my wife saw the new playhouse, she decided that the Escape Pod should probably stay in the basement, since she didn't want a "tiny house hotel in the backyard." Our neighbors have volunteered a spot behind their garage, which would be quite nice, so it still may make it outside. For the winter, I rearranged the basement so that there was room to move and use the teardrop. I added a memory foam pad that I cut off an old mattress topper we were getting rid of (still need a cover for it, though). Last night I hung the door with a scrap piano hinge I had around, installed the door window, and then tacked the 25" square window in place.

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Although I'm still a bit surrounded by boxes, it was quite nice to sit inside for an hour with my book. I need to rig up some lights for the winter, and finish covering the interior with contact paper. I'll also try to get it painted down here, since the glue-soaked canvas looks like a rag a hundred cats peed on, which isn't all that attractive.

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One of my coworkers is printing me out a 2' square forest scene I can tape to the square window so that I'll have a better view than the back of my furnace three feet away and the sewage drain pipe to the left. :) And here's a photo for Mike, of me sitting in it. Once I get someone else in the basement with me, I'll have them take a photo of me inside now that you can see the teardrop straight on.

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I have a few weeks off over the holidays, exactly a year after I started building this little shelter. While I hope to spend some time working on it, I hope I spend even more time sitting inside, with a hot cup of coffee and a stack of books. The kids both fit in with me, tucked down under the shelf at the end.

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More updates as I have them! And thanks again for all the support and ideas you folks have given me over the past year.
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Re: Backyard Escape Pod

Postby Vedette » Wed Dec 16, 2015 3:46 pm

So when do you start work on the stairwell entrance? :twisted:
You should ask Doug Hodder what to do? ;)
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Re: Backyard Escape Pod

Postby Gold5one » Wed Dec 16, 2015 6:15 pm

I see visions of a Dr Who teleportation capsule for the kids - :)
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Re: Backyard Escape Pod

Postby mreidsma » Fri Jan 15, 2016 12:20 pm

I've been working a bit here and there on finishing off the interior and exterior. The door-side wall inside is half covered withbarneood contact paper, and it'll take another 1/2 hour to finish the rest. Cutting the contact paper gives me a chance to use my wife's bookbinding tools in her bindery, which is kind of fun.

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Last night I started painting the exterior after smoothing out the seam between the roof and wall canvas with some silicone caulk, smoothed and sanded. I need to pull the door and window to finish the rest, so maybe this weekend.

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-M
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Re: Backyard Escape Pod

Postby Gold5one » Fri Jan 15, 2016 7:50 pm

what a playhouse! :applause:
"the slow road has the most adventure"
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Re: Backyard Escape Pod

Postby mreidsma » Sun Jan 17, 2016 2:50 pm

Thanks, Mark! I finished up the painting and trim this weekend, so other than the real door handle (which had to wait until some of the interior work is done) the outside is done-for-the-winter. (When we get better ventilation, we'll paint a stripe at the bottom, like the Scotty's from the '60s. That was part of the "lease" agreement with my wife if it stayed downstairs. :)

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Next week I'm hoping to wrap up the interior walls, and then I have to start problem solving the interior hatch to the fake tongue box. Right now it's just an ugly, open hole.

-M
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Re: Backyard Escape Pod

Postby mreidsma » Sun Oct 29, 2017 11:49 am

Well, after a year and a half of just *using* the escape pod, I finally spent a few hours this weekend wrapping up some things I'd never finished.

First, I installed the window properly, with actual trim instead of pieces of scrap wood at the corners. The window is only 3/4 or an inch thick (it's a reclaimed sash) and the walls are 1 1/4", so I just put 1/2" square dowels inside the window opening on the interior to hold the window in. Using it for a couple of years convinced me that trim sticking out into the 2' wide space inside would be a problem, especially when the kids pile in there for story time. Plus, it looks nice to have a flush wall at the opening.

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And since it's unlikely that the Escape Pod will ever make it outside, and the outside of the window is rarely seen in the basement, I didn't mind having exterior trim holding the sash in place. Like the rest of this project, I used what I had laying around. In this case: leftover 3/8" fence boards.

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The next step will be to paint this last side of the Escape Pod with the exterior oops paint I did the top and front with last year. Then we'll paint a cool blue stripe along the bottom with (you guessed it) leftover paint from our upstairs bathroom.

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The last project this weekend was installing the actual RV door handle I bought 3 years ago when I started working on the Escape Pod. In the meantime we just had an old dresser door knob on the outside, which meant it was hard to pull the door closed from the inside. And what's worse, my 3yo son would open lean against the door and flop out onto the basement floor. (We put a rug down after the first time, but still.)

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For the inside I added a block under the handle like nearly every other door with this handle I've seen on the forum.

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This has been such a great project to work on, and as my kids grow they use it more and occasionally help out. I read in here a lot, as do they, and since I'll be on sabbatical next year (working on a book) I have a feeling that I'll be reading in here daily, and maybe even taking those naps I dreamed of when I built it.

Thanks again to everyone here on the forum for all the great advice. Hope to post another update this winter!

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-Matthew






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Re: Backyard Escape Pod

Postby featherliteCT1 » Sun Oct 29, 2017 6:47 pm

I enjoyed reading about your build. Do you think you will ever want to or be able to get the Pod outside?
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